As general purpose computing devices have been reduced in size and price, and the mechanisms of connectivity to audio communication networks has become more open and implementable in them, the stage was set for a unification of their functions with those of telephones. This progressed from both ‘sides’: first, from the standpoint of implementing telecommunications functionality within simulated ‘telephone’-like environments on the PC, then to the addition of standard software applications like games and office apps to handheld phones. Implementation of the present invention in either context is interchangeably described herein, as both serve as equivalent platforms to the ultimate embodiment of it in small, handheld devices capable of both functions, which have become known as ‘smartphones’, a word which arose in the late 1990s, and has been defined as a phone with additional software functions.
However, despite a vast market and though it's quickly become one word, the currently extant “SmartPhone” products still don't make the leap across the gap, to combine the “Smart” and “Phone” parts significantly. In particular, their ‘smart’ built-in features and add-on software applications don't significantly utilize the actual conversation content for utility significantly more than other, standard phones (and equivalent telecommunications devices) do. One reason for this is because the technology's heritage has kept a wall in place, or one has been erected on purpose for reasons such as to isolate the phone's mission-critical core telecommunications functionality expected by consumers from the bugs, crashes, security issues and other software vagaries of the more complex software environment of an operating system which hosts a panoply of diverse applications built by various vendors. Barriers to conversation processing in the Apple iPhone, for example, appear to have been purposely placed, with designers cited publically on this point. Smartphone pioneer Steve Jobs was even quoted as explaining the need for limitations as a platform difference: “You don't want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone, and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore.”
This dichotomy between the communications channel of the phone and its ‘smarts’ has inhibited the conceptualization and implementation of a broad range of valuable applications. This wall can be breached using certain configurations of hardware and software, which applications such as ReminderRing, created to provide customized notifications and other contextualized communications, and its extensions and related useful embodiments described herein, exemplify. In particular, they realize a functionality in which the content of a conversation between two people, conducted on a telephone or equivalent communication device, influences its later functionality, producing changed behavior of that instrument during its subsequent operation. More broadly, they bring both the context and content of a communication to bear in extending the utility of the device through its interface with the user's needs and perceptions.